Can there be good without bad?
How do we judge?

I had a discussion with someone the other day and we came to complete disagreement on this subject.

I
am in full belief that there cannot be anything good without the
comparison that something is bad. For everything that exists that
isn’t a median, there is an opposite.

For example, there is no
way that there can be white [the reflection of all light] without the
presence of black [the absorbtion of all light]. How are we to judge
what is one or the other if one doesn’t exist?

It doesn’t
even have to be that black and white [pardon the pun]. Suppose there
is white and there is off-white, then the white considered white
because it is being compared to the off white. If one had known off
white their entire lives as the whitest of white, then they would judge
it as the whitest of white until they saw the true white.

My friend differs and says that things can be good just in the essence of being good. His example is this:

Say
there is a bowl that suits your purpose. That bowl is good because it
suits your purpose. You are not comparing it to anything because it is
simply good unto itself.

My argument is this: How do you know
that the bowl is good? You know it is good because in your mind you
can think of things that wouldn’t suit your purpose… like a plate. A
plate would not be good for the purpose, but the bowl would.

However,
if the bowl didn’t exist, then you would use the only other thing
availible to you (the plate) and you would probably call it good
because you didn’t know any better.

It’s like in Math when your
teacher teaches you a way to solve a problem. You solve the problem
and you believe that the method is good because it enabled you to solve
a problem.

Later, you find out that the way you chose to solve
the problem is considered the “bad” way compared to the simpler way to
solve the problem. Without the simpler way, you would have continued
to consider the “bad” solution “good”.